A UN military observer discusses local security concerns with Bishop Levi Hassan during an ECS peacebuilding workshop (Photo: © Joanna Udal/CMS)
Can peacemaking be learnt? Southern Sudan’s experience tends to confirm that it can.
On 9 January 2005, following years of calamitous civil war, the Sudanese government and the main rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, bringing an end to that particular conflict.
The agreement provides for six years of autonomy for southern Sudan, to be followed by a referendum on the political future of the region.
One of the seeds of hope during the many years of conflict in Sudan has been the emerging role of the Sudanese Church in peace-building and reconciliation at grassroots level.
The people-to-people peacemaking process pioneered in southern Sudan has become well known internationally and has now been researched and made available for use elsewhere.¹
The programme was initiated in 1997 under the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), following which more than 20 significant peace conferences and meetings have been mobilised and facilitated by the NSCC.
The most famous was the Wunlit Conference in 1999, which brought together Dinka and Nuer chiefs, church, civil and community leaders, elders, women and youth, and resulted in the making of a covenant of peace and reconciliation and an end to long-standing tribal conflict in the area.
Group discussion during an ECS peacebuilding workshop in Yirol, southern Sudan(Photo: © Joanna Udal/CMS)The key element in this people-to-people peacemaking has been the empowerment of local communities to take the lead in resolving conflict within and between their communities.
This became a real possibility after the land-mark meeting between church leaders and the SPLM/A leadership at Kajiko, near Yei in southern Sudan in 1998, which gave recognition to the Church’s central place within civil society.
The peace-making process relies on developing local peace constituencies, in which different community leaders and groups share a common interest in achieving peace.
To start such a process, there must be a shared commitment to ending conflict, aggression and suffering, and to mobilising their communities to sustained efforts for peace, justice and reconciliation.
The process also relies on the central involvement of those having moral and spiritual authority within their tribe, whether these are religious or traditional leaders.
The process has been developed on the basis of both traditional southern Sudanese cultural values and Christian values, and has not been afraid to adopt mechanisms and symbols from both where these have been found compatible or to re-inforce one another.
Common to both is the understanding that self-examination, acknowledgement of responsibility, public admission, apology, forgiveness and restoration are essential elements for achieving reconciliation, justice and a lasting peace.
A drama enacting reconciliation during a peacebuilding workshop in Yambio in 2007(Photo: © Joanna Udal/CMS)Among the traditional tools adopted within the process have been songs, drama and storytelling, especially in the form of parables and proverbs. These have been used as effective means of communication by which the participants may share their stories.
Symbolic rituals, such as slaughtering a bull and sharing in a common meal, have been used at key points in the process to help the conflicting parties to change from being enemies to fellow peace-makers.
The conferences have also been held within a framework of Christian prayer and worship, allowing the various aspects of the Christian understanding of peace to be communicated – peace with God, peace with one another and peace with ourselves.
As well as participating in these ecumenical initiatives, the Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) has developed its own Justice, Peace and Reconciliation programme.
Archbisho Daniel Deng Bul of Sudan explains the Coumprehensive Peace Agreement at a peacebuilding workshop in Yambio in 2007(Photo: © Joanna Udal/CMS)Under the active chairmanship of the current Archbishop, Daniel Deng Bul, the ECS Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Commission has held peace-building workshops in most of the 24 ECS dioceses, creating awareness of the Church’s role and responsibility in building a sustainable peace.
The workshops aim to mobilise the Church’s own best resource – its people – to become agents of reconciliation and healing in their communities.
Pastors, lay-readers, Mothers’ Union and Youth leaders have all been involved and local justice, peace and reconciliation committees have now been established in those places to take forward the work.
The Christian Gospel has much to contribute to the quest for justice, peace and reconciliation in Sudan.
It is central to the Christian faith that, in Christ, God was and is reconciling the world to himself and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us (2 Corinthians 5.19).
The Church’s role in working towards justice, peace and reconciliation is an essential part of its Christian calling. The challenges may be great but then so is the hope if it is firmly based upon what God may do through his people.
1. "Building Hope for Peace Inside Sudan" was published by the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC) in 2004 in Nairobi, Kenya. The NSCC has since merged with the Sudan Council of Churches (SCC), so contact SCC, PO Box 469, Khartoum, Sudan, for a copy.
CMS mission partner Joanna Udal is Assistant to the Archbishop of Sudan and the Archbishop of Canterbury's representative within the Episcopal Church in Sudan.